Sir Wilfred Grenfell, the famous medical missionary to
Labrador, was a fast worker when it came to falling in love.
He was on board a ship returning to England when he
spotted a charming lady on deck. He was 43 years old, and
so it was not as though he had never spotted a charming
lady before. But this woman had such an appeal to him that
he proposed to her shortly after he met her. She naturally
resisted saying, "But you don't even know my name." He
responded, "It doesn't matter, I know what its going to be."
Here was a case of love at first sight, and history is full of
such romantic stories where people find their mate in a
moment and live happily ever after.
Others who are equally open to God's leading have a
tough time finding their life partner. Billy Graham is a
prime example of this side of the coin. Graham was going
steady with Emily Cavanaugh in college. He felt she was
beautiful, talented, and spiritual, and he told his parents he
planned to ask her to be his wife. She admired Billy a great
deal, but she came to a point where she told him she had
reconsidered his proposal, and she could not accept it. He
was devastated and felt the world had ended.
Later Graham developed a relationship with Ruth Bell.
Their love grew, but it also hit a snag. She was a missionary
kid and felt God wanted her to be missionary, but Billy felt
called to be an evangelist. They became engaged in 1941,
but at Wheaton College Ruth told Billy she was unsure after
all. There were tears and struggles before Ruth could make
a commitment to be his wife. She realized he needed the
balance she could give him. He was too serious, and she
could add the lighter touch to his personality. They have
had a long and happy marriage, but the point is, there was
struggle and a lot of adjustment.
Love stories can be romantic love at first sight, or
tangled webs of struggle type stories. In one of the great love
stories of the Bible we have a case which is both. The story
of Jacob and Rachel is a classic case of love at first sight.
She came with her flock of sheep to the well, and Jacob
became an instant servant by rolling away the stone from the
well to impress her. A short time after he was negotiating
for her hand in marriage. But the story takes on the
characteristics of complexity and struggle as Laban throws
his oldest daughter Leah into Jacob's bed, and thus began a
lifetime of conflict and competition in Jacob's love life.
Out of this both simple and complex love story God
brought forth His people-the 12 tribes of Israel, and the
blood line to the Messiah, and the greatest love story of
all-Christ and His bride the church. Romantic love is to be
celebrated because the whole redemption plan of God's love
revolves around the romance of human love. You cannot tell
the story of God's love without the story of the love of
husband and wife. Romance is at the very heart of God's
plan of salvation, and it becomes an effort in futility to try
and separate love into the sacred and the secular.
Romantic love is a vital part of the sacred plan of God to
save a lost world. It is valid, therefore, to celebrate the gift of
romance. God does so Himself by making romantic love such
a major part of His revelation. It is exalted to the highest
level in the Song of Songs where we read of romantic love in
8:6-7, "It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many
waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away. If
one were to give all the wealth of his house for love it would
be utterly scorned."
Jacob's love for Rachel illustrates this. He wanted her as
his mate so strongly that he would work for 7 years to
possess her as his own, and v. 20 says the 7 years were like
only a few days because of his love for her. It was a small
price to pay for such a treasure. Love was his motivation;
love was his energy, and love was the fire that could not be
quenched even though one wet blanket after another was
thrown on its flame. There is no escape from the emotional
side of love. It is a passion, or an intense feeling. The story of
Christ's suffering for his bride is called a passion play. His
intense feelings were a passion. Passion can be torment, and
love sick people can go through torment in what they are
willing to pay in terms of suffering to possess the object of
their love.
I remember the risks I used to take to see Lavonne when
she lived 20 miles away from me. I was a teen driving 50
dollar cars, and more than once I was broke down on the
highway between her home and mine. If I had a date with
her nothing else mattered but the keeping of that date. I
literally risked my life to keep a date with her. Blizzard
warnings were irrelevant, and I would take off in a car most
people would not keep for parts, and head into the storm to
get to her. In our courtship I put 18,000 miles on an
assortment of junk bound cars as I traveled that 20 mile
stretch over and over. I had to get out sometimes and put
snow in the radiator to keep the car from burning up. I had
to get help from both her father and mine to get out of the
ditch. I had to suffer the torment of near worthless vehicles
over and over, and all of the pain of it was nothing for the
joy of being with Lavonne. I know the power of the passion
to possess. Romantic and Redemptive love have this in common-they
are passions to possess. God's passion to possess fallen man,
and Christ's passion to possess His lost sheep were so great
that they took on infinite suffering in order to make it
happen. The greatest power in the universe is the power of
love. It moves and motivates persons toward more goals than
any other power. It is the prime mover of God, for God is
love, and because He is love He created all that is, and he
provided a plan whereby fallen man can be redeemed and
restored to fellowship with Himself. Love is why there is
anything to celebrate at all. Love is why there is a heaven to
hope for, and why there can be joy in a fallen world.
The most powerful motive for the overcoming of any
problem is love. Aleida Huissen had smoked for 50 years and
tried often to quit but just could not do it. Then 79 year old
Leo Jansen came into her life and proposed. He refused to
set the wedding day, however, until she quit her smoking.
Will power had failed her for years, but love was stronger
and she was able to quit for the sake of love. Love was the
passion that gave her the power to do what she could not do
without love. A. Z. Conrad said of love, "It furnishes to the
world its progress passion. It is storm-defying,
energy-conquering, venture-challenging, soul-awakening. It
eats up the fires sent to consume it. It swallows the floods
sent to drown it."
If we love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and
strength, it will not be hard to give up anything that
interferes with that love. If we cannot do it we lack the love
that give us the power of passion. If we cannot give up
things that hinder our relationship with our mate, it is a sign
that we have let the passion of love drain away. When we
lose the passion of love we lose the power that makes all
relationships the priority they need to be.
Jacob loved Rachel, and when a monkey wrench was
thrown into their lives, and he had to work another 7 years
to possess her, he did it for his love for her kept her in the
place of priority. This love story is like many of the classic
romance stories of literature. It is often like a tragedy.
Rachel had to fight the battle of the other woman, which was
her own sister. She had to watch as Leah gained status by
giving Jacob children she could not give him. She eventually
bore him his beloved Joseph, but she never won the
competition to give him the most children. She also died
before Leah and Leah got to be buried with Jacob in the
end. There were a lot of tears in this love story, but it is still
a beautiful and powerful story of passion and priority that
should motivate us who have less complex lives to celebrate
the joys of love.
The passion of Jacob for Rachel was persistent through
all of the changes of life. Rachel did not stay the cute little
shepherdess she was the day they met, and the day he fell in
love with her. In chapter 30 she became a jealous wife and a
nag. She wanted children so badly that she became obsessed,
and Jacob had to get angry with her. Later she stole her
father's idols, and she risked getting Jacob into serious
trouble. It was not a trouble free marriage at all. Both had
blemishes on their character, but they never ceased to put
each other in a place of priority. "Love is not love that alters
when it alteration finds."
As monogamists we think we only marry one mate, but
the fact is we all marry a number of people because our
mates keep changing, and we have to adjust to these changes
and learn to love a different person than the one we married.
Through the years all mates change, and sometimes it can be
hard to adjust, for your mate may not be the person now
that you expected them to be for life. You have to fall in love
again with a new person. Those who cannot adjust to
changes in their mate often get divorced. All couples go
through what is called divorce periods where they are in the
process of deciding if they love the new and different people
they have become. This is where love is again the power that
keeps them together. If love is allowed to fade, and there is
no effort to rekindle the flame of passion, there is a danger
that they will part. Those who make it through these
periods do so because they work at rekindling the flame.
Those who neglect love and just drift tend to drift apart
completely. Divorce is a refusal to remarry the new person
your mate has become. Long-range marriage is a
commitment to keep on marrying the mate you have no
matter how often they change.
Here is the other side of love that goes beyond the feelings
and emotions of passion to the act of the will. Love on this
level is a matter of choice. In Gen. 30:2 Jacob is angry at
Rachel. He is no longer filled with passion to roll away stones
for her, or to labor for 7 years for her. He now has negative
emotions, and he wonders how she can be so ridiculous as to
hold him responsible for her barrenness. If love was only
passion and positive emotions, Rachel could have been
divorced at this point, but Jacob's love was a commitment to
her to love her even when she was totally unreasonable. One
sided definitions of love that stress it to be a feeling fall far
short of the real thing. Some have defined love this way:
1. "A tickling sensation around the heart that can't be
scratched."
2. "Love is a dizziness that won't let me go about my
bizziness."
Such feeling oriented definitions lead to serious problems
when people take them as the whole picture, for these
feelings may be real for a time but they do not persist, and if
people expect them to always be present they will feel that
love has left them and they will move on to find it again with
someone else. Feeling oriented love will lead people into
affairs, for people can have strong feelings, and even passion
for complete strangers who are attractive. If you let this kind
of feeling and passion be your guide you will never have a
lasting relationship of love. Love is commitment and choice
to be loyal to one person even when the feelings are not
there.
The world's advice is to find a new partner when you
come to a divorce period in your relationship. This is a
rejection of the other side of love which is commitment.
Commitment is what enables love to bridge the divorce
period in marriage. The feelings cannot leap that gorge, and
so two people are cut off from each other unless there is some
other means by which they can remain in contact.
Commitment is that means. Eliminate commitment and live
only on feeling love, and you can count on being a statistic,
for divorce is almost inevitable where there is no
commitment.
Commitment is a choice. If I commit to turning right I
cannot also turn left. Every commitment means a loss of
some other choice. If I choose to be faithful to one person I
cannot also choose to play the field. But on the other hand,
if I choose to play the field I cannot ever again choose to
have been faithful to one. Everybody has to give up
something, and so the wise person looks at the record of
where different choices lead. Our promiscuous people the
happiest people? Are prostitutes noted for being the
happiest partners in wedded bliss? Does anybody give the
playboy highest marks in being the example for youth to
follow? The facts are that two people committed to one
another for a lifetime are always the ideal of what love is all
about. This is the kind of love that continues to grow, and
makes a poet like A. Warren write,
We could not know, my dear, we could not guess
How years augment the miracle of love;
How autumn brings a depth of tenderness
That is beyond young April's dreaming of!
How there would burn a richer flame some day
Then that which first threw glory on our way.
The Bible makes it clear that God's ideal is two people
who fall in love and passionately seek to possess each other,
and spend the rest of their lives committed to weather all
storms, and keep that passion alive until they are parted by
death. This means that marriage is not a gamble. It is a
sure thing that it is going to be costly. Love is a commitment
to pay that cost of maintaining the relationship. The
Jacob-Rachel love story shouts out for all of history to hear
that bad times, conflict, and obstacles do not destroy a love
which has gone beyond feelings to commitment. The reason
the world is full of people who once loved each other, but are
now divorced is because of a one sided love, which is passion
that never developed the other side of commitment.
The number one secret of a strong marriage is the
assurance that your mate is committed to you. You can fail
them, and get angry at them, but you know they are
committed to you. This is the solid rock on which marriage
is built. Jesus said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you."
And Paul said, "Nothing can separate us from the love of
God in Christ Jesus our Lord." This is the foundation for
security in our faith. When you have that kind of security in
your marriage you build on solid rock and not on sand.
Lack of commitment leads to insecurity. If we had no
assurance that Christ's love was permanent in spite of all our
sin and failure, we could have no sense of security at all.
Some polls have revealed that many Christians feel
spiritually divorced, for they do not have the assurance they
will go to heaven. They have a very unhappy spiritual
marriage. Mates who do not feel secure are also unhappy,
for they feel their failure could lead them to be forsaken.
Commitment is what makes mates realize their failure will
not ever lead to being forsaken. It can be costly to make
such a commitment, but it is worth it for those who want the
full potential of love in their relationship.
When we celebrate love we need to see it as a matter of
rejoicing in the cost two people have been willing to pay to
keep their relationship alive and growing. Jacob had to give
up always feeling the energy of his passion to labor for
Rachel, and instead feel the energy of anger at her pouting
and depression. She had to give up the ideal of being the
one to give him his first son, and the most sons. She had to
endure the heartache of barrenness. Anybody could write a
script for romance better than what reality produces, but
reality is the price we have to pay for love in a fallen world.
Nobody gets it without cost, and that even includes God.
But God says, and history says, and life says, love is worth
the cost. Therefore, let us rejoice in romantic and
redemptive love, and celebrate love as God's greatest gift.
